True. I think funerals still serve a purpose. It's the opportunity to feel like you have said goodbye and you remember the deceased. It's the best we can do. It may be comforting for some to believe in the afterlife and/or a loving god but I think that doesn't have to be part of the deal. Secular people may not be able to provide much comfort but they can at least encourage the bereaved to move on after having celebrated the deceased's life. Sam Harris also recommends a great recipe for coming to terms with the nature of mind and being more accepting of who we truly are: meditation.

"Waking Up: A Guide To Spirituality Without Religion" sounds like a great book. (Already checked the first chapter on his website.) It gets you to really explore the sense of self. No need to believe in God, spirit worlds, or ghosts.

On his deathbed, Christopher Hitchens stated that the religious proposition seemed to him more absurd than ever. When asked if he ever questioned why he got esophageal cancer ("Why me?") he replied, "Why not me?" before explaining that he was just a statistic and that he simply got what his father died of - only about a decade earlier due to his lifestyle. (Although he didn't agree with his wife, he was an alcoholic.)

Christopher Hitchens remained an atheist until the end.

[ Post made via Android ]

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

Sorry ... what? When did I say I wanted immortality?! When did I say I even believed in immortality?! Absolutely no where in my post did I even use the word "immorality." What in your little mind gave you the inkling that I was talking about the nature of immortality, dictatorships, or your anti-romantic society? You strange, strange creature. I was just trying to build on what you said... Jesus. There is no dispute that immortality makes no sense and that it would be terrible if it did make sense. In fact, you're literally just rehashing things I've said on other threads.

Squidville illustrates precisely my sentiments about eternity in heaven, nesgirl. I think we agree on that point and we should be glad that it's not true. That was certainly a good speech by Sam Harris, deschainXIX. He speaks so much sense! It is a rare quality in a person. By the way, I didn't think you believed in an afterlife either. That was an odd response by nesgirl!

Belief in the afterlife can be a real problem. Take a look at Iran with its surplus of orphans as well as grieving parents and relatives, whose sons and daughters and nephews and nieces were used as cannon fodder in the eight-year war with Saddam Hussein. These people were forced to applaud the evil tactics of clergyman who promised heaven to the credulous but never cared to risk martyrdom themselves.

There was a time when Westerners could holiday in Iraq amongst Kurds and even visit Erbil and learn about its history. For example, it was there that Alexander the Great defeated the Persians. A few years ago you could fly direct from several airports in Europe to a couple of efficient airports in Iraqi Kurdistan. Now, as you know, the country is in turmoil due to the Islamic State. Business must have really gone down for these people:

http://www.theotheriraq.com/

In Kurdistan, the prime minister Nechirvan Barzani even arranged for a memorial to be built for fallen American soldiers. Despite being devided by different sects, Kurds are quite united and friendly to Christian minorities. In the past, many Arab Iraqis had fled the bedlam in Baghdad and Basra for the Kurdish safer haven.

If there is a people that the US government can rely on in Iraq and Syria today, it is the Kurds. It was Kurdish intelligence that first exposed the direct link between Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and Osama Bin Laden. They have bucked Saddam Hussein, al-Qaeda, and now, they face the ISIS problem.

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

I wouldn't blame you for jumping into a black hole at all. In fact, me and deschainXIX have read about the fallacy of dualism and we concur with the intellectual authors that we admire so much. (Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett..)

Dualism is nevertheless tempting as a copout. But it is a non-explanation. Immanuel Kant once made a distinction between two terms: phenomena and noumena. The former describes things as they appear. The latter is the concept of things as they are. To excise the dogma of dualism once and for all we need more progress on the noumenal side of consciousness. When and if we succeed, religion will be forced to go through a radical reform or be jettisoned altogether.

Here is a gorgeous quote by Dennett:

"There is the lurking suspicion that the most attractive feature of mind stuff is its promise of being so mysterious that it keeps science at bay forever. This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, its most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up."

- From "Consciousness Explained"

By the way, guys, what do you know about the shootings near a Canadian embassy on a War memorial ground where a soldier died? The FBI is involved and it could be related to Jihadist terrorists. Canadians are having a problem with youngsters who went to Syria to fight for the Islamic State and returned to bring the war to the West. How many more soldiers will die and how many more atrocities 9/11-style await us?

"Empty cognizance of one taste, suffused with knowing, is your unmistaken nature, the uncontrived original state. when not altering what is, allow it to be as it is, and the awakened state is right now spontaneously present."

Summerlander wrote:Dualism is nevertheless tempting as a copout. But it is a non-explanation. Immanuel Kant once made a distinction between two terms: phenomena and noumena. The former describes things as they appear. The latter is the concept of things as they are. To excise the dogma of dualism once and for all we need more progress on the noumenal side of consciousness. When and if we succeed, religion will be forced to go through a radical reform or be jettisoned altogether.

Here is a gorgeous quote by Dennett:

"There is the lurking suspicion that the most attractive feature of mind stuff is its promise of being so mysterious that it keeps science at bay forever. This fundamentally antiscientific stance of dualism is, to my mind, its most disqualifying feature, and is the reason why I adopt the apparently dogmatic rule that dualism is to be avoided at all costs. It is not that I think I can give a knock-down proof that dualism, in all its forms, is false or incoherent, but that, given the way dualism wallows in mystery, accepting dualism is giving up."

- From "Consciousness Explained"

That whole bit about phenomena and nuonema is genius. Now I know how to express in rational words what I think about these sorts of debates. It seems like the most compelling argument believers in a soul/afterlife could ever provide is: "C'mon, man, you've gotta feel that there's something else out there. You can just sense it, you know? Don't you feel that something is inside of you? Where do you think your love, your hope comes from?" It is the epitome of letting feelings and impulsive perception influence (rather egotistical) opinions, and is in my opinion no better than being sleep-deprived, hallucinating a giant purple rabbit, and subsequently starting a religion surrounding the Second Coming of the Colored Bunny. If you think about it, dualism is really the keystone of most religions. If society can leave behind all those misinformed cliches about "souls" and free will, it would be a huge step toward clarity.

Summerlander wrote:By the way, guys, what do you know about the shootings near a Canadian embassy on a War memorial ground where a soldier died? The FBI is involved and it could be related to Jihadist terrorists. Canadians are having a problem with youngsters who went to Syria to fight for the Islamic State and returned to bring the war to the West. How many more soldiers will die and how many more atrocities 9/11-style await us?

I passingly heard about that, but I didn't much investigate it. I had no idea it had to do with Islam. Probably because that little detail was skirted by the news source whose tweet about it I saw. That's a big problem, people's unwillingness to talk about Islam ultimately being the wizard behind the curtain. Whenever you try to engage somehow in discussion about religion or anything relating to dogma, they give you this burning "back off, you fascist freak" look.

nesgirl wrote:I did my science, and found out that black holes can actually destroy immortality (so they are basically the antidote for immortality), and will obliterate all forms of matter and light all in one. There is scientifically no form of matter that can survive a black hole, immortal or not. As for me, if I found myself immortal after living a while, whether alive or undead, I would resort to jumping into a black hole. I don't know how many users would actually resort to doing something like that.

That's true that black holes destroy matter. However (and I'm assuming a lot here, since no religious book really gives us any definitive description of the nonsense it preaches), if someone were to be immortal, they could not be integrated with physical matter. They'd have to be made of ... well, spirit, I suppose. Connective tissue, bone, grey and white matter--all of that ultimately rots and dies. So I'm afraid hurling yourself into a black hole wouldn't do much for you, friend. And again, this is assuming dualism is correct (which it's not): I would go more for trying to drive myself insane, somehow. I would try to destroy my soul. I'm not sure what soul-believers think about psychopathy ... but they would have to think that any damage to the psyche of a person ultimately equates to damage of the soul. But, actually, trying to "reason" about these sort of things is pointless, because none of it is actually based on reason. I just wanted to point out the flaw in your "scientific" theory about black holes. Although, I must say, if I died and found myself to be a ghost, the first thing I would do is fly into space and hurl myself into a black hole. Just to see what happens. Then I'd go back to earth to report my findings ... assuming of course that I didn't get lost in the depths of space or travel to another world

Also, just so everyone knows, Christianity actually doesn't talk about living in heaven forever. That's a huge misconception, even among Christians. I just think it's so hilarious how Christians don't even know about what Christianity purports. If you ask a Christian what happens when they die, they'll almost all say "I'm going to heaven forever." Actually Christianity talks about how the earth will be transformed into a New Earth, in which all creatures and humans are reverted to their initial state when God created them: immortal, harmless, perfectly sentient. In many ways, most Christians's ignorance of Christianity is the reason Christianity is still around. If Christians actually got around to reading their Bibles, reading all the parts and truly analyzing their "good, graceful, omniscient, omnipotent God," they'd quickly start to question themselves. Same with Islam.